Hollywood Undead is a band that originated in 2005 from a song titled "The Kids" that Deuce and J-Dog posted on MySpace to positive reviews and which led them to form the group Hollywood Undead with their friends Johnny 3 Tears, Charlie Scene, Funny Man, Da Kurlzz, and Shady Jeff. Shady Jeff later quit, leaving the band with only 6 members. In their first nine weeks on MySpace they had almost a million plays and by 2006 they were said to be leading MySpace's top unsigned artists list with over 8 million plays. By 2008 the band had over 40 million plays and over 400,000 friends on MySpace.

The band performs in individual masks in order to maintain an air of mystery. This originated from their MySpace page which they filled with pictures of themselves in hockey masks. They made their live debut in August 2008 at the Virgin Mobile Festival after winning 285,000 votes, over half the total, in a Book the Band contest against four other bands. Their popular song Undead is featured on the Madden 2009 Soundtrack and was released as an official single on August 19, 2008, making it the second single from Swan Songs. Their song "Young" is featured as one of the 20 bonus downloadable tracks in Rock Band 2.

Though the group first signed a record contract in 2005, they spent nearly three years working on their debut album. Hollywood Undead have signed a contract with A&M/Octone Records and they released their debut album Swan Songs on 2 September 2008. Swan Songs reached #22 on the Billboard 200 in its first week of release, selling 21,000 copies.